


Of Being a Princess

by calendarpages



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 06:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calendarpages/pseuds/calendarpages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine knew from the tender age of six what he wanted to be when he grew up: a princess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Being a Princess

Blaine decided very early on that he wanted to grow up to be a princess.

The idea presented itself when Blaine was six, when he saw his very first Disney movie. It was Beauty and the Beast, and he'd only convinced his older brother Cooper to let him watch because Mama was out and so Cooper was left in charge for the afternoon. Mama was the one who didn't let Blaine watch movies, so whenever she went out, Blaine made sure to get in as much screen time as possible.

Cooper hadn't agreed straight away though, because he really didn't want to get in trouble with Mom, but Blaine'd kicked up a real fuss and Cooper had given in pretty easily after that, much to Blaine's delight. So far Blaine'd seen some of Cooper's movies, which were all way too scary and loud, as well as a couple of Mama and Papa's which all had way too much kissing. He'd made these opinions known through copious amounts of blubbering and pant-leg tugging, so this time Cooper had chosen a much more appropriate movie, at least judging from the pretty cover of the video box.

On this particular afternoon, Cooper had sat Blaine down in front of the TV in the living room with a plastic bowl of cheerios and a sippy cup of juice, told him not to tell Mom  _or else_ , and then gone down to the den to play video games.

As the movie started, Blaine was transported. The fluidity and grace with which the animated characters moved astonished Blaine. When he'd tried to dance along to Cooper's music or to the flowing melodies his mother sometimes played on the big piano in the corner of their sitting room, he remembered feeling loose and carefree, but never beautiful. Not like Belle, with her sparkling gown and her nimble feet, twirling and spinning around the grand ballroom of the Beast's castle. Even the Beast himself was graceful, in a way, as he cradled Belle in his arms like she was something precious, something to be treasured. Blaine wanted someone to hold him like that.

As the credits rolled, and Cooper emerged from the den in search of food, Blaine Anderson declared himself a changed man. Before, he'd always figured he'd grow up to be like his Papa, wearing big serious suits and long silky ties. That had seemed like an okay life, after all, Papa seemed to like it well enough if the amount of time he spent at work was any indication, but it all seemed very dull and uninteresting compared to Belle's fantastic adventures.

Blaine didn't have a word for what Belle did, apart from maybe hero, but that didn't sound quite right, so he'd asked Cooper about it one day on their way home from school.

"Hey Coop, have you see Beauty and the Beast?" Blaine was skipping alongside his brother, struggling to keep up as Cooper's long, skinny legs carried him twice as far as Blaine's short, chubby ones.

"Mhm," hummed Coop absentmindedly, fiddling with the strap on his backpack and wondering if Mom would have a snack ready when they got home.

"What is Belle?"

Cooper quirked an eyebrow. "Um, a girl?"

"I know that, I'm not stupid," Blaine said with a frustrated huff. "I mean, what  _is_  she? Like does she do a job?"

"A job? I don't really think she has a job, B."

Blaine huffed again. "But doesn't she get a special name? Like when Papa says that he's a lawyer and Mama says she's a real state agent."

"Real estate agent," Cooper corrected gently and Blaine stuck his tongue out at him.

"But does Belle have a name like that?"

"Uh, I guess you could say she's a princess."

"A princess? What's that?"

Cooper gave Blaine an odd look, "Nobody's ever told you what a princess is?"

Blaine shook his head.

"A princess is the child of a King and Queen."

"What's a Kingandqueen?"

Cooper laughed at that and Blaine scowled up at him, sorely tempted to kick him in the shins. It wasn't his fault nobody told him stuff!

"They're separate things, B. A King is the man ruler of a kingdom, and a Queen is the lady ruler," explained Cooper.

"Oh, so like the presdent," said Blaine, his eyes wide with understanding.

"President, yea, like the President."

Blaine furrowed his eyebrows. "But Belle's dad wasn't a King, he made things, like machines and stuff."

"He was an inventor, yea. But Belle married the Beast, and the Beast's parents were a King and a Queen."

"Oh, I get it now!" Blaine looked comically enlightened, grinning with pride at his new discovery.

Armed with this knowledge, Blaine found new purpose in life. He was going to be a princess when he got big, of that much he was certain. He knew his parents weren't a King and Queen but he figured that he could be like Belle and marry someone whose parents were. He wasn't exactly sure how one went about finding someone who had King and Queen parents, but more than that, he had no idea how to get that person to marry him once he found them. He wondered if he could just be like Belle again, and read them stories and show them how to feed birds, because they were just learning how to read in Kindergarten and he'd fed pigeons with Cooper when they'd visited Columbus during the summer. This sounded alright, but it seemed oddly specific to Blaine, so he decided to ask around.

The girls knew the most about princesses, since they were always parading around the Kindergarten classroom in puffy dresses from the dress up corner and telling everyone that they were princesses even though Blaine knew they weren't. So he went up to one of the nicer ones, Sarah, who once shared her grapes with him at snack time. She seemed nervous, but he assured her that he just wanted to know what he had to do to become a princess.

She looked at him a little bit funny when he said princess but she seemed willing enough to answer.

"You've got to be saved," she said simply.

"Saved from what?" Blaine asked, confused.

"A dragon, or a tower, or a troll."

Blaine didn't know what a troll was, but he knew about dragons from one of the movies Cooper had showed him before he found Beauty and the Beast. Blaine also knew that dragons weren't real because Cooper had assured him so when he'd started having nightmares. That only left a tower. Blaine had to be saved from a tower. That sounded a lot easier than going to the trouble of finding someone with King and Queen parents and getting them to marry him. All he had to do was find a tower and somehow convince someone to save him from it. Blaine wasn't totally sure how being saved from a tower would make him a princess, but he figured it was worth a shot. Plus he liked Sarah, and he didn't think that she would lie to him.

For a while, Blaine did nothing but search for towers. Everywhere he went, Blaine was on a constant lookout for anything that could possibly be considered a tower. Nothing fit the bill, unfortunately, and so Blaine, being a six year old whose attention span was limited at best, resolved to wait until he was older and more capable of finding towers to become a princess. So when Cooper took Blaine to a new park on the other side of town while Mama visited a friend nearby, princesses and towers were far from Blaine's mind.

At that moment, all Blaine wanted to do was prove to Coop that he was, in fact, big enough to climb a tree by himself, without a leg up or anything. Cooper was preoccupied, one of his friends from summer camp lived close to the park and Cooper had promised that they could meet up, but Blaine was being a bother. So when Blaine declared that he was now old enough to climb trees, just like Cooper, he seized the opportunity to get his little brother out of his hair for a while. It wasn't like he'd actually be able to climb the tree, he was certifiably tiny!

"Deal. You climb that tree, I'll buy you ice cream," said Cooper and waved at his friend who was just entering the park from the street.

Blaine scampered off, clumsy feet tripping over themselves in an effort to reach the trunk of the tall sycamore tree faster. Grappling at the coarse bark of the lowest branch, Blaine hoisted himself up, swinging a short leg over and shimmying up so that he was seated on the branch. He continued this way, pulling himself up with his arms and then bolstering himself with his legs, until he reached a spot where the branches grew too thin for him to go any further. Straddling the branch he was seated on, Blaine let out a satisfied whoop, grinning to himself and swinging his legs a little. He'd done it! That'd show Cooper!

Still smiling, Blaine looked down and felt his stomach lurch. He was so high. So very high. The tree hadn't looked this tall from the ground. Blaine suddenly felt a little lightheaded, and he scrabbled at his branch, locking his arms and legs around it and squeezing his eyes shut. He could feel his heart beating fast against his chest, and his breathing quickened, coming in short, shallow pants. He wanted to call out, to scream and cry for his brother or his Mama, but he felt paralyzed with fear. Suddenly, from far down below on the ground, a voice drifted up to him, its tone inquisitive.

"You okay up there?" came the voice, and Blaine twisted his neck a little to be able to see over the side of the branch.

It made his head spin, but he was just able to make out a figure standing at the base of the tree, head tilted upwards. The boy looked young, about Blaine's age, with caramel colored hair and a worried look on his face.

Blaine willed his mouth to form words, but all that came out was a strangled sort of whimper.

"Do you want me to come up?" called the boy.

Blaine nodded, bobbing his head as obviously as possible without tipping himself off his branch.

Quickly and nimbly, almost like a monkey, the boy climbed the tree, pausing only to make sure that his clothes didn't snag on any protruding twigs. Soon he was on a branch adjacent to the one Blaine was clinging to and Blaine was able to get a good look at his rescuer. The boy's light brown hair was styled effortless, combed neatly and then set in place with something, maybe hairspray. His clothes were simple, yet elegant; beige pants rolled up to just below his knees, a short sleeved white button down under a pale blue cardigan, accessorized only with a light green bow tie. The boy regarded Blaine with large blue-green eyes, blinking curiously at him and quirking his lips into a little smile.

"Need some help?" he asked playfully and Blaine was too scared to do anything but nod sheepishly.

"Here," said the boy, reaching out a hand, "we can climb down together."

Blaine nodded, a little less enthusiastically than before because climbing down at all seemed like a terrifying idea, even with this boy to help him.

The boy swung over until he was standing on a branch just below Blaine, so that his head was at the same level as Blaine's but the rest of his body was positioned lower, incase Blaine were to slip and fall.

"What's your name?" asked the boy, smiling reassuringly.

"Blaine," came the whispered reply, and the boy's smile grew.

"Take my hand and then swing your left leg down onto that branch there," said the boy, offering Blaine his hand and pointing at a branch just above the one he himself was standing on.

Steeling himself, Blaine released the branch he was wrapped around with one hand and placed it in the boy's outstretched one.

"Now move your foot down to the branch I showed you," prompted the boy and tugged gently on Blaine's hand, sending a wave of anxiety through Blaine's system.

Tentatively, Blaine unlocked one of his legs from its place wrapped around the branch and stretched it down, feeling around for the lower branch the boy had pointed to. Without releasing Blaine's hand, the boy crouched slightly and used his other hand to nudge Blaine's searching foot onto the lower branch. Blaine smiled appreciatively and shifted a little weight onto that foot. Then he slowly unwrapped his other leg from the original branch, still holding it lightly with his other arm, and moved that leg so that he was standing upright on the lower branch, one hand still grasped firmly in the boy's, the other clutching awkwardly at the higher branch.

"You need to let go of the higher branch if we're ever gonna make it down," said the boy gently, but Blaine shook his head. If he let go, even for a second, he knew he would fall. He knew it, he just knew it.

"You won't fall, I promise," murmured the boy. "I won't let you."

Slowly, and with the utmost caution, Blaine released his death grip on the branch, incrementally relieving pressure until he was able to snake his arm from around it and move his hand down to a lower branch, the same one that the boy was holding.

"We can go slow, okay?"

And so they did, slowly but surely making their way down. The boy was quiet and patient, whispering encouragements when Blaine started to tremble so hard he thought he'd lose his grip and taking breaks whenever Blaine needed to. Finally, they reached the last branch, the one closest to the ground and the boy dropped down, landing on his feet with a faint "oof". Blaine was more wary, it still looked like a mighty long fall to him and the boy seemed to sense his trepidation.

"If you fall, you'll fall on me, so it won't hurt so much," said the boy with a grin.

Scooting over on the branch so that he was perched on the very edge, Blaine pushed off with his arms and fell swiftly to the ground, barely managing to plant his feet on the grass before forward momentum overtook him and he tumbled into the arms of the other boy with an undignified squeak. They toppled onto the grass in a mass of flailing limbs, Blaine ending up with his face smushed into the other boy's stomach. Scrambling up, Blaine uttered his first words since the boy had found him trapped at the top of the tree.

"Sorry, sorry, I'm so sorry," he whimpered, half expecting the boy to yell at him or shove him like the big boys on the playground sometimes did when he got to the swings before they did.

"'s okay," said the boy, picking himself up and dusting himself off, twisting around to examine his rump for any signs of grass stains.

"Who are you?" asked Blaine, still slightly shell shocked, his hazel eyes wide and sparkling with tears.

"Kurt," replied the boy, looking slightly affronted, "aren't you going to thank me for saving you?"

Something clicked in Blaine's head with those words and his eyes grew even wider.

"You saved me," he stated lamely.

Kurt blinked, "Yea, and?"

Blaine's face morphed into a blinding grin and he surged forward to gather Kurt into a hug, squeezing his arms around the other boy's stomach and lifting him a little bit off the ground.

"You saved me Kurt, you saved me!" crowed Blaine, bouncing excitedly from one foot to the other. "Do you know what this means?"

"What?" squeaked Kurt, wrapping his arms protectively around his torso, as though preparing himself for another one of Blaine's violent attack hugs.

"I'm a princess now Kurt! You made me a princess!" squealed Blaine, prying Kurt's hands from their place at his sides so that he could tug Kurt into a little dance, spinning them both around and giggling all the while.

"Blaine!" said Kurt, loudly enough that Blaine stopped their spinning.

"You can't be a princess," Kurt said firmly.

Blaine's face fell, "But I thought when someone saved me, then I could be a princess, like Belle."

Kurt stared at Blaine, his face a mix of bewilderment and affection, "No silly, you can't be a princess because you're a boy and princesses are girls."

Blaine wasn't convinced, "Doesn't the story go that the princess gets saved and then gets to live happily forever after, right?"

"Happily ever after," corrects Kurt, "yea, that's right."

"So if you saved me, can't I be a princess and can't we live happily ever after?" implores Blaine, his eyes impossibly wet and hopeful.

Kurt opens his mouth, as if to say something, but then shuts it quickly and smiles.

"Yea okay, so I'm the prince who saved you and now we get married and live happily ever after," agrees Kurt and Blaine beams at him.

"Prince and princess, that sounds nice," said Blaine, reaching out to grab Kurt's hand again, because for some reason, holding hands with Kurt feels really good, like their hands were made to fit together or something. Probably because Blaine is a princess and Kurt is a prince so they're supposed to hold hands and do lovey stuff like that.

"Prince Kurt and Princess Blaine," echoed Kurt, swinging their joined hands absentmindedly.

Suddenly, Cooper appeared at the edge of the grove of trees where Blaine and Kurt were standing, a frazzled look on his face. His eyes lit up when he saw Blaine, and he rushed forward, his friend lingering back, looking bored.

"Blaine! Jeez buddy, I've been looking everywhere for you!" he exclaimed, and Blaine ginned excitedly and tugged Kurt forward.

"Coop! Coop! Guess what?" chirped Blaine and Cooper dropped down to crouch in front of the two smaller children.

"What is it B?" Cooper prompted, smiling warily at the meek little boy clutching shyly at his brother's hand.

"Kurt saved me! From a tree! And now he's a prince and I'm a princess and we're going to live happily forever and ever and ever after!" babbled Blaine, releasing Kurt's hand to gesture at the tall sycamore tree towering behind them and clap enthusiastically.

Cooper shot Kurt a confused look, "Alright B, I'm glad you had fun but we really have to go, Mom's been looking for us for ages and she's gonna have a cow if we don't leave now."

"But Coop!" whined Blaine.

"C'mon not now Blaine," snapped Cooper and Blaine sniffed pitifully, angry tears gathering in his eyes.

"I want to say goodbye," said Blaine with a pout, stomping his foot and crossing his arms defiantly.

Cooper threw his arms up in defeat, "Fine, okay, but fast because its on my head if Mom loses it."

Blaine nodded and then turned to Kurt, a shy smile on his face.

"Thanks a bunch for saving me Kurt," said Blaine, his cheek tucked bashfully into his shoulder, "you're the best prince there ever was."

Kurt blushed and averted his eyes, staring down at his feet as they drew nervous circles in the grass.

"I think you're the best princess there ever was, even better than Belle, " replied Kurt quietly, still not looking up. As a result, it took him completely by surprise when Blaine leaned in and pressed a wet, sloppy kiss to his cheek.

"Time to go, Blaine," shouted Cooper from the edge of the clearing where he'd gone to wait with his friend.

"Bye Kurt!" called Blaine as he stumbled towards his brother, trying to run forward while still staying twisted in Kurt's direction at the same time.

"Bye Blaine!" called Kurt, one hand waving, the other pressed reverently to the cheek Blaine had kissed.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Klaine Week over on tumblr, for the prompt kid!Klaine.  
> This has been cleaned up and moved from fanfiction.net.


End file.
